2011.12.21

Choral Christmas #5 - In The Bleak Midwinter

In The Bleak Midwinter is a poem by 19th Century English poet Christina Rosetti. It became a popular carol after English composer Gustav Holst set the text to music and published it in the 1906 English Hymnal. The Holst tune is the one most people know, although there is another musical setting of the text by Harold Darke that is great.

The version I usually listen to is by The Robert Shaw Chamber Singers, and is an arrangement of the Holst tune by Shaw's longtime collaborater Alice Parker.